Merchandise Release Form: Fill & Download for Free

“Have you ever denied a search from a cop?”Yes. Well, a confiscation of property. And because I asked for a warrant, I nearly ended up in prison on felony charges.At the time, I owned a chain of jewelry stores, mostly in suburban neighborhoods but a few in pretty rural areas. A lot of our profit (read: most) came from actually buying old/unwanted jewelry from people and melting it down. To be clear, we weren’t some sleazy fly-by-night we buy gold shop. Our suburban locations were in very nice neighborhoods and the very last thing I wanted was to have anything to do with stolen property.Unfortunately, given that I had 9 stores and each one did a couple hundred of these transactions every month, inevitably, every couple of months or so, the issue would come up. Thankfully, our state had very well thought-out laws on how to handle the situation. When I would purchase an item from someone, I would record a detailed description of the item along with the person’s ID information into a police database which law enforcement could then see and access immediately. If something was potentially stolen, a detective would come into the shop and let us know that the item was suspected stolen property. As per state law (quite explicitly), I was then required to hold the item for up to 30 days (this hold could be renewed by the police), until the potential thief was convicted (which would mean it was, indeed, stolen property, and the Judge could dispose of it as he saw fit), or until the potential thief was found innocent (in which case they were the rightful owner and rightfully sold it to me). A very logical and fair process. We had GREAT relationships with the urban police department that had jurisdiction over most of my stores, and GREAT relationships with the smaller departments over the rest of them. We had actually caught a lot of thieves by working together (you would be shocked at how many people sell stolen property and happily use their own ID to do so). I would say that 80% of the time, the item was indeed stolen and the owner was reunited with their property. That suited me just fine, I didn’t want neighborhood thieves thinking it was safe to sell to me and so it was just a cost of doing business.Eventually, as I said before, we expanded into locations in some very rural areas. These areas were hit hard by the opioid epidemic. To be honest, if I knew the level of stolen property issues that I would be facing in those neighborhoods, I never would’ve opened those stores. In any case, shortly after acquiring one of these rural stores, I get a call from my manager there. She said that a Deputy Sheriff was there about a stolen item and was insisting on confiscating it. We had paid the customer around $200 or so for it, so it wasn’t exactly a priceless artifact, but it was valuable merchandise. If it was stolen, by all means it should go back to the original owner. But if it wasn’t, we had paid a lot of money for it. I had her put the Deputy on the phone, and I asked if she had any paperwork to give us showing that we had to surrender this and how we could go about monitoring the case and its outcome. I can’t recall specifically if she had no paperwork or just a very slapdash, general release form, but she made it clear that the item would be evidence in a case and the confiscation sounded very, very permanent. She offered to have her supervisor call me, and I readily agreed. I figured this was just a case of a misunderstanding of state law. Boy, was I wrong.Now, I had been very professional and polite this entire time. So had the Deputy, to her credit. But the Sergeant that called me was nasty and belligerent right off the bat in the most country sheriff way possible. I could almost picture him strutting around his office with his trooper hat on and fingers looped through his belt. He told me that he was confiscating the item and I could either let him do it now, or he would come with a warrant and “really make my day bad”. I told him that state law explicitly, in black and white, lays out the exact process to be followed and I gave him the statute number so that he could see for himself. Without missing a beat, he said, “Well, that’s not how we do things in Ross County, boy.” I can still hear my reply of, “Well, sir, Ross County is in the State of Ohio. So you should.”I told him that if he wanted to do things differently than the law said, he would need a warrant from the Judge allowing him to take the property. He told me that if he had to go get a warrant so late in the afternoon, it wouldn’t make him happy and it wouldn’t make the Judge happy. But what did he want me to do? Freely allow any person with a badge to walk into my jewelry shops and be able to take whatever they wanted, outside the bounds of state law, with no documentation, no case information, and no warrant? The guy made me out to be the lowest scum of the Earth, as though my primary mission in life was to provide an income to thieves all over America.Well, he went and got his warrant. I thought that was the end of it, but hell no. Several weeks later, I go out to get my mail, and there is a postcard from a law firm in Ross County (where the store in question was located) offering to represent me in my upcoming case. I was surprised because I live an hour or more from there, so I couldn’t imagine why I was getting spam. Did I really have an upcoming court case? I went online to check.Not only did I have an upcoming court case, it was scheduled to start in 10 minutes. In a courthouse an hour away, at least. I was dumbfounded.Here’s what actually happened when Sgt. Smoky The Bear went to get his warrant: He opened a case of “receiving stolen property” (a felony with jail time, mind you) against me personally. Not my company, but me. Keep in mind that I had never seen the item in question, I didn’t buy it, I wasn’t even THERE when it was purchased. Because my company wasn’t named in the case, papers were not served to my store or my office about the upcoming case. Papers were never served to me personally, and I’ll never know why for sure, just that the computer system says they were unable to be served. If it hadn’t been for that post card, I would’ve been a no-show at court and the Judge would’ve issued a bench warrant for my arrest. All while I would’ve been blissfully unaware.As it was, I immediately called the Court and explained the situation. They saw the papers weren’t served, and rescheduled everything for me. The case was dismissed about four months later, but only after several pre-trial hearings and several thousand dollars in lawyers fees. I asked my lawyer if it was possible to sue the Sheriff’s Department to make sure they obeyed state law from now on. He told me that I could try, but it would be insanely expensive, and even if we got some kind of court order, it wouldn’t be very enforceable. So I defended myself and then did nothing else.We never saw or heard about that item again. My former business partner tells me they still confiscate things without a warrant and they never see those items again. After the fiasco with the criminal charge, he has no desire to stand up to them about it.It makes my blood boil just thinking about it. I worked hard to play by the rules and not cheat the system, and I actually took satisfaction in the criminals we got off the street by cooperating with law enforcement. There were a lot of small shops doing what I did who didn’t play by the rules and were harbors for thieves. Guess which one of us almost got sent to prison?

Michael Forrest Jones Yes in the US an employer can ASK you to fill out a background check release and application form. They can ask you anything they want but you can say no. For a formal background check, the employer should ask for your written signature on a release form. You have to provide them with your permission for a formal background screen. A true background check that includes criminal records search and identity search would require your signed release as well as a social security number. While conducting background screens is an important part of hiring, applicants should and do have rights. Employers can always use one of those pay-per-search online tools but that information is not always as reliable as professional investigation firms are.We typically send the background check application and release form to a candidate immediately after the verbal offer of employment has been accepted because there is a fee involved in doing a background check so we wouldn’t do it if we weren’t sure we wanted to hire that person. On the other hand, I worked at a large e-commerce retailer and because the interviews took place inside their distribution center (where all the expensive merchandise is) we did criminal background checks on all applicants who came in for interview. It was costly and most applicants were not hired but we still spent money on their screens.As for employers who conduct background screens without a person’s permission: if you decide to use the information you get from that screen against an applicant, according to the Fair Credit Reporting Law, you are obligated to send that applicant an “Adverse Action Letter” showing them why you decided not to hire them.Keep in mind one other thing. The internet is a great source of information. I don’t need your permission to Google your name and/or your address (if you put it on your resume, I can use it) and I can look for your Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, etc. I recall one situation where I was about to call an applicant to conduct an interview by phone for an accounting position. I looked her up on Facebook just to see what it showed. There she was. Smiling, blood-shot-eyed, behind a big plume of “smoke” sitting in front of her was a giant bong. I decided then that I wasn’t really interested. I honestly don’t care what she does on her own time but if this is the way she truly wants to portray herself to the world (which she obviously does), I had to reconsider whether or not I wanted her representing our company.

I have two close friends who work at Walmart and have for years and they told me a bit of how Walmart operates on this issue.They have their Loss Prevention people who monitor the cameras and watch for suspicious behavior. They also have plain clothes people who wander the store who will follow people they suspect might be stealing. They never get too close but watch from a distance. If a target appears to take something and later go into the bathroom, they will send someone in to check if the person ditches the merchandise, if they find an open container or evidence something has been unwrapped. They also closely watch the self checkouts to see if they try going through and paying for one thing and take another.If they believe they have seen someone take merchandise without paying they will wait for the person to try to leave the store. Sometimes they will have someone waiting near the exit and stop them as they leave, other times they will wait until the person is actually out of the store. Then Loss Prevention will confront them and tell them to come back in the store, taking them to the security office. This is usually one of the rooms in the front but it could be one all the way in the back. There the Loss Prevention people question the alleged perpetrator and take their picture. They run their name through their own system and check if they have been caught at other Walmarts and will document what they observed. At that point what happens is largely up to the local laws, security person, the amount of merchandise taken and the attitude of the alleged thief. They may call the police or may handle it on site or have the police take over. If the amount of value is small and the perpetrator cooperates, it is possible you will be required to sign a form that forbids you from coming onto any Walmart owned property for a year and then you can be released. Depending on the laws of your state, they may call the police who could issue you a summons to come to court and then release you. In other states or if the amount is several hundred dollars or more, you can be taken to jail.I'm sure more people get away with theft from stores like Walmart than they would want anyone to know but it is a risky proposition. I don't think I personally would want to risk all the potential fallout and hassle. Once, quite some time ago I was going through the self checkout line and actually missed scanning a bag of chips. Apparently it was light enough not to set off the scales in the bagging area but when I got to the door, I was stopped. The Loss Prevention person told me I was trying to leave with unpaid merchandise but since I had about 6 bags filled with stuff, it was a small bag of chips and everything else had been properly scanned, they told me to go back and rescan the chips and then let me go. I guess they figured if I was going to try not paying for something it would be for something more than a $.98 bag of potato chips.